Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Snarky Rexroth

A New Rexroth Biography

Well, you know how it is. Some readers hate poets; other readers love and worship them.

That was very apparent in the NYTimes Readers Group Discussion with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes—especially when we discussed the biography of the “other” lady in the infamous menage a trois with Assia Wevill.

That biography was the last book discussed—before The New York Times so rudely made “exiles” of us all. That’s how we all ended up there in Elba: Exiles of The New York Times. Or one of the reasons.

As nnyhav mentioned in his literary blog, the making permanent of the "temporarily unavailable" Archives of the NYTimes Readers Group Discussion has added another layer of mystery as to the demise of that distinguished group of astute intelligentsia.

According to the miffed John Solt: “The “mugging” of Rexroth continues unabated inside the book. Since Rexroth has told his own story in An Autobiographical Novel (NY: Doubleday, 1966) and Excerpts from A Life, one wonders why Hamalian titles hers A Life of Kenneth Rexroth, until we fill in the blank later and realize her intended title is “A Wife-Beating Life of Kenneth Rexroth.” —John Solt, “With A Tabloid Biographer Who Needs An Oeuvre? An Unabashed Appreciation Of Kenneth Rexroth”